Town Square

Bay Area drove state population growth in 2012

Original post made
on May 2, 2013

The Bay Area led the charge in California's massive population increase last year, particularly Santa Clara County, which ended up being state's fastest growing county, according to a report by the Department of Finance.

Posted by Resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on May 2, 2013 at 10:46 am

This is interesting. Jobs and residents increase, but there is no mention of how schools are coping with the influx of population.

K - 12 education is one aspect. In many areas of the Bay Area schools are closing because of declining enrollments. That is not the case in Palo Alto or our environs. Where are all the children of this increased population going to be educated?

The bigger problem is college level education. Our UCs are educating out of state residents and overseas residents due to the higher fees paid. These college grads are remaining here, taking the jobs (often needing H1 visas) because local employers are interested only in UC educated employees. Therefore partially adding to the population growth. Our own high school grads cannot get into the UCs because with more and more high school grads and less and less space for California residents they are not able to get into our own UCs.

Does anyone realise that we are educating outside residents who want to remain here and our own kids are not getting decent 3rd level educations?

Posted by Resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on May 3, 2013 at 7:40 am

Mark Zuckerberg and a group of similar minded people has formed a group to lobby for more ease in getting H1 visas granted for highly educated engineers. These engineers are being educated here, in our UCs. They are getting into our UCs, not because they are more talented than our students, but because the UCs don't want Californian residents who pay less fees.

This is what is happening to education in California. We are educating people who are taking away homegrown jobs.

The Weekly should do an in depth study about our high school students, their prospects for education and high tech jobs in their future. This is a big problem and the media are not taking any notice.

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